Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 6: Dire Circumstances

The rain kept pouring. 

Raindrops pelted on the two deformed corpses, diluting the blood into a pale red, spreading it everywhere.

Lao Mian and Mai Zi had died right outside the door of the empty house.

Lao Mian was almost chopped into mincemeat; his entire body had lost its shape, and the group could only barely identify him by his clothing. All the magical artifacts on his body were shattered, mixed in with the pieces of his corpse.

Mai Zi’s death was even stranger. Her body was mostly intact, but with some extra parts. Her spine was twisted, and four legs extended from her pelvis, with an arm protruding weakly from under her left armpit.

Even her neck had grown an additional head the size of an apple, its tiny facial features not yet fully formed. 

She had been pierced through the heart with Lao Mian’s copper coin sword. Her eyes were half-open, half-closed, with a gentle, peaceful smile on her face. Paired with her deformed body, the smile was especially eerie.

The woman who hadn’t drawn a lot let out a piercing scream, stumbling as she dashed out the door, running madly toward the village entrance.

Her figure was quickly obscured by the mist, and no one stood up to chase her. Clearly, some were too scared, others were indifferent, and some had other concerns—

“Did they—did they break a taboo?” Cheng Songyun’s voice was trembling. With the taboos unknown, she didn’t dare take a single step.

“Everyone, stay calm! Report your status!” Jia Xu shouted, though he looked like he was about to vomit.

The young man with the dyed Blondie spat, his face dark and grim. “No idea. My ghost doesn’t care about this stuff.”

“At the break of dawn, they went out on their own.” The gloomy teenager crossed his arms, though his attempt to appear calm couldn’t hide his pale face. He was trembling badly. 

“My ghost said the same,” the office girl added, shivering, while Cheng Songyun and Fang Xiu nodded in agreement.

Bai Shuangying: “?” You didn’t even ask me. What are you nodding for?

In truth, he had sensed something. At the time of their deaths, he hadn’t detected any intruders, which indicated that they hadn’t been killed by evil spirits. 

…Which meant, they had definitely broken a taboo.

“They definitely broke a taboo,” Fang Xiu said. 

“They were both veterans, experienced and armed. They died so quietly, without even a scream. It probably wasn’t an evil spirit attack.” 

As for a human attack, that was even less likely. Humans might be able to chop someone into pieces but couldn’t make someone grow extra limbs.

“However, all of Mai Zi’s belongings are gone. Maybe someone found the bodies before us,” Fang Xiu added.

“You…” Jia Xu hesitated before finally asking, “You seem pretty used to this?”

Earlier, he had thought Fang Xiu seemed pretty inconspicuous. 

Fang Xiu’s hair was a bit messy, and his bangs covered half his face. Not even a socially awkward college student would wear their hair like that. Combined with his thin frame, he gave off a vibe of being on the fringes of society.

His only impression of Fang Xiu was “this guy has guts.” 

But staying completely unaffected in the face of Mai Zi’s grotesque body wasn’t a matter of just having guts.

“I work as a cleaner in a hospital. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies,” Fang Xiu said casually. “Now that they’re gone, what should we do next?”

With that, all eyes turned to Jia Xu.

“Let’s use the daytime to look for supplies. This place is too strange. Everyone needs to stick together and not separate.” Jia Xu quickly snapped back to his role as leader. “Once we’re familiar with the village, we can start investigating the taboos.”

His suggestion received unanimous approval. The group was terrified of going out, but they were even less willing to stay here with the two grotesque corpses.

There had been nine people when they entered the house, but only six left. 

As usual, Fang Xiu was the last to leave, and as he did, he closed the door to the empty house. The moment the door shut, it felt like something inside the empty room was watching him.

The feeling vanished as quickly as it had come, and Fang Xiu decided to ignore it. 

After all, they had spent a peaceful night here, so he’d just think of it as an ordinary roommate situation.

However, Bai Shuangying turned around and gave the empty house a couple of extra glances.

……

During the day, the village looked unexpectedly normal, like any abandoned village you might find anywhere. 

The village paths were made of trodden dirt, and the house walls were the straw-and-mud mix popular decades ago. Most of the houses had their doors and windows ajar. Fang Xiu glanced inside a few, seeing skewed furniture and mostly emptied belongings.

Outside, there wasn’t the scattered ghost money they had imagined, nor any strange funeral items. Some walls even had remnants of propaganda banners, their red fabric torn and decaying, the words barely legible but likely safety slogans.

The air was warm, with a light drizzle continuing. If not for having seen the two corpses earlier, the group might have relaxed a bit.

“Those are pumpkin seedlings. They’re edible.” 

Blondie pointed to an overgrown vegetable patch, his expression softening for once. “What are you staring at? I used to live in a village and grew this stuff.”

Yet, no one went to pick any, fearing that pulling up seedlings might count as breaking a taboo. 

Would entering an abandoned house count? What about picking wild fruits from a tree? …Or getting injured? Or killing something?

At that moment, the fear of “breaking a taboo” belatedly gripped everyone. 

Even two experienced veterans had died inexplicably. On reflection, any normal action they took could potentially violate an “E’s” taboo.

“Damn it, stop being so cautious. I’m going to eat today. If we’re not even allowed a bite of food, then what’s the point!” 

Seeing no one move, Blondie cursed and strode over the collapsed fence. Before long, he had gathered a bunch of pumpkin seedlings, unharmed.

“Bunch of cowards,” he sneered, snapping off a tender shoot and popping it into his mouth. 

He then demonstrated a spectacular display of projectile vomiting right in front of everyone.

“What the hell is this?!” he cursed, tossing the pumpkin seedlings far away. 

Seeing that the young man was unharmed, Jia Xu picked up a small leaf, put it in his mouth, and began to chew. The next second, he grimaced in pain and spat the leaf out.

“…It’s both fishy and foul. It’s impossible to swallow. Forcing it down doesn’t work either. It’s the kind of physiological reaction where you just can’t swallow it,” Jia Xu explained with difficulty.

Next to him, Blondie opened his mouth to rinse with rainwater, only to immediately start vomiting again. 

“Fuck, this is corpse water—!” His face turned a shade of purple-red.

Fang Xiu sniffed the rainwater on the back of his hand and detected no smell. He then picked up a pumpkin seedling and sniffed it. It smelled fresh, with no hint of any odd odor.

“Do you sense anything?” Fang Xiu plucked a pumpkin leaf and asked Bai Shuangying.

Bai Shuangying lifted his head, about to show some authority, when Fang Xiu kindly added, “If you don’t feel anything, don’t force it. It’s fine.”

Bai Shuangying suddenly deflated: “……”

He kept a stern face. “It’s not related to any evil spirits.”

“Then it must be one of the ‘E’s’ taboos,” Fang Xiu mused. 

Blondie and Jia Xu were still perfectly fine, so this taboo wasn’t lethal. But it was still troublesome. It meant their food and water sources were questionable.

It better not be some absurd taboo like “no eating” or “no drinking water”. After a whole night, the breakfast they had at the Disaster Relief Tower was fully digested, and Fang Xiu was already starting to feel hungry.

As it turned out, what they feared came to pass. 

Seedlings, mushrooms, roots, rainwater, river water, well water—Blondie, refusing to give in to superstition, tried everything like Shennong*, vomiting so much he almost painted the village in a rainbow.

*A mythological Chinese ruler known as the first Yan Emperor who has become a deity. He’s credited with various inventions: including the hoe, plow, ax and is known for being a horticulturalist, consuming a variety of plants (even poisonous ones).

By the end of the day, they hadn’t found a single edible thing, and everyone’s expressions were grim.

The information they gathered on the village was also lacking. The buildings were mostly the same, offering no breakthrough clues like ancient relics. The only two somewhat special places were a small shrine on the east side of the village and a graveyard on the west side. 

Considering the special nature of these two sites, they didn’t dare to investigate recklessly.

With one or two hours left before sunset, the group moved silently through the village. 

The rain steadily drained their body heat, making them hungrier faster. Fang Xiu adjusted the straw hat he’d picked up, feeling extremely thirsty, and was beginning to show signs of low blood sugar. His vision occasionally went black.

Suddenly, the scent of roasted meat wafted through the air. Just as Fang Xiu turned his head, Blondie bolted away.

The aroma was coming from an ordinary-looking courtyard, where faint human voices could be heard inside. 

Blondie’s face quickly turned ashen, his features became exaggerated and animalistic. He pushed off with his feet and leapt silently onto the wall.

“Power of a ghost that lures victims to their death*,” Bai Shuangying commented in a low voice.

*He’s referring to a [Cheng Gui] (伥鬼). It’s a ghost that has been devoured by a tiger, who then becomes enslaved to it. It then lures people so that its master (the tiger) can feed on them. Nowadays, rather than tiger, it can be anything (basically the master of the ghost).

Fang Xiu was intrigued. “So that hairless, cat-like thing was a ghost that lures victims to their death.” 

He only remembered what the ghost looked like but didn’t know its type. Unexpectedly, he learned something new. Fang Xiu looked encouragingly at Bai Shuangying. “You’re really knowledgeable.”

Bai Shuangying grinded his teeth. This human’s attitude was too strange, giving him the constant feeling of punching cotton.

Just as Fang Xiu finished processing this new knowledge, Blondie jumped back down from the wall. His distorted features returned to normal, leaving only shock and confusion on his face. He refused to speak no matter how much anyone asked.

Not until they returned to the warehouse.

“It was the group with the jade Buddhas.” Blondie finally collected himself. “That woman who ran away this morning… Her flowered jacket was on the ground, but she was nowhere to be seen. The roasted meat had a strange shape. They actually dared to eat…” 

He dry-heaved a few times, but perhaps because he had vomited too much earlier, nothing came out.

Lao Mian and Mai Zi’s bodies were still outside the door, untouched. The outdoor temperature wasn’t low, and the bodies were decaying quickly, emitting a peculiar stench. 

Without the two veterans to keep watch, many footsteps had appeared outside. They were masked by the sound of rain, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes near, sometimes far, as if circling the warehouse.

Inside, there was no food and no water. Outside, the evil spirits were enemies, and so were the living. They didn’t even know if they could last until the day after tomorrow, let alone actively search for the “E”.

The office girl let out a suppressed sob, and Cheng Songyun gently patted her back. The gloomy teenager curled up into a ball, burying his face between his knees. 

Jia Xu was desperately scratching his hair. “Don’t panic, everyone, don’t panic. There must be a way…”

“Come on, this isn’t some game where there’s a guaranteed way out, is it?” Blondie said hoarsely, “They said we’re sacrifices, and ‘sacrifice’ isn’t exactly a nice word.”

After speaking, Blondie’s gaze drifted toward the door. The two bodies there hadn’t fully decomposed yet, and the odd, sweet stench was seeping in through the door gap. 

He licked his cracked lips, and a bit of red blood vessels appeared in his eyes. “If you ask me, we might as well—”

“I understand now,” Fang Xiu interrupted Blondie. “The taboo isn’t ‘no eating or drinking’. Things that meet certain conditions can be ingested. However, we lack the information to determine what those conditions are.”

“So we still have nothing to eat,” Blondie grumbled. “We’re already at the point of life and death, so we might as well—”

“I want to go outside and take a look,” Fang Xiu interrupted again.

“It’s dark out there.” Jia Xu stopped scratching his head. “Lao Mian and Mai Zi mentioned that it’s very dangerous at night.”

Fang Xiu: “But Lao Mian and Mai Zi are dead, and we didn’t get anything useful during the day.” 

If it was the same tomorrow, they would be incredibly weak and could only hide and wait for death. Fang Xiu didn’t like the term “waiting for death”.

Jia Xu: “Let’s not even talk about evil spirits. What if ‘going out alone’ is a taboo…”

“Is anyone coming with me?” Fang Xiu turned to the others.

Everyone was looking at him, but no one responded.

Fang Xiu took a deep breath and grabbed Bai Shuangying by the wrist. 

“I’ll go with my ghost,” he said. “I’m not alone.”

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The author has something to say:

The nighttime world of just the two of them is about to begin☆

In fact, if he had met a normal person, Mr. Bai could have played the role of a terrifying villain who watches coldly from the sidelines.

But a normal person wouldn’t have been able to summon Mr. Bai in the first place…

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